“In a small meeting with journalists at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today, Google’s senior vice president for hardware Rick Osterloh dropped a little bit of news: It looks like the Pixel laptop — Google’s premium Chromebook and the original product bearing the Pixel name — has hit the end of the line after just two iterations,” Frederic Lardinois reports for TechCrunch.

“When asked if Google had plans to produce any more Pixel laptops, Osterloh said that the company had “no plans to do one right now,” Lardinois reports. “Indeed, if you go to the Google Store today, you won’t find any Pixel laptops for sale, though there are plenty of third-party Chromebooks available there.”

“The Pixel was always meant to be Google’s example of what a premium Chromebook could look like,” Lardinois reports. “The Pixel 2, however, was discounted without a replacement last August.”

And yet we have been fed how amazingly successful Chromebooks have been…. Well maybe cheap and cheerful ones perhaps in their niches but ones that might actually make money clearly not. Of course we will no doubt hear in a year or more now Google is making its first product in the market and without irony lecture us just how successful a game changer it is. Never hurts to butter up Google I guess when you need their favour.

Well, to be fair this is the just the Google Pixel Chromebook. There are a number of third party Chromebooks.

You could liken this situation to Google Android products. Samsung and others have sold a lot of them, but the Google Nexus product line…not so much.

IMO, Chromebooks are in the same category as the late and not-very-lamented “Netbooks.” They are cheap, limited, and underpowered. Netbooks failed because of those factors, and I suspect that Chromebooks will, as well. But never underestimate the attraction of a very cheap product. There are always people out there who are either sufficiently stingy, optimistic, or desperate to give them a shot.

I think Chromebooks are serving a significantly different market than netbooks which at best were small, crappy laptops.

Primary schools use Chromebooks extensively because they are inexpensive and essentially disposable and require almost no IT support. They are a good product for chronically underfunded public school systems. Easy to use for the kids.

Yep, my daughter’s high school went from all out iPads to all out Chromebooks. They’re about half the price, have a keyboard and don’t need cases to protect them. My daughter’s Lenovo whilst ugly is built tough.

I’ve been messing with a Chromebook from Lenovo. Had to return one because a faulty trackpad. Had to pop the plastic case back in near the hinge. For $198 I paid not a total bust but it’s not even fair to compare it to my Macs. It’s not a horrible 3rd or 4th device but as a main work machine it won’t do, at least for me.

Slap in the face for the bloggers slobbering all over this POS and cutting Apple down at the same time. You guys are real fools to keep bending over for Google. Stock manipulators won’t even punish this BS company.

Google is not that interested in the low margin business of producing laptops.
The Chromebook market is steadily growing in schools and businesses. iPads and Mac Laptops not so much.

Given the Big Cheeto and his minions, a Chromebook might prove handy when traveling overseas. Try harvesting data from a device with no local storage. The Border folks are increasingly aggressive and that will doubtlessly increase under Drumpf.